Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan’s decision to slash about 140 jobs from its Cory mine west of Saskatoon and temporarily halt production at two other mines is the latest in a long string of cutbacks in the Saskatchewan fertilizer industry this year.

The Saskatoon-based fertilizer giant says the cuts will help it remain competitive amid weak potash prices, which have fallen from about US$900 per tonne in 2008 to around US$150 today, but one expert believes the worst is yet to come.

“This is probably the beginning, and not the end,” said Brooke Dobni, who studies the province’s massive potash industry and teaches corporate strategy at the University of Saskatchewan’s Edwards School of Business.

“This is more of what I think I would expect to see, given the dynamics of the marketplace that we continue to be in and the outlook for the future in terms of demand for the commodity.”

The layoffs are a result of production cuts as PotashCorp shifts its strategy toward its low-cost mines. The company offered a similar justification when it shuttered its brand-new Picadilly mine in New Brunswick in January.

“That means, primarily, in this instance, Rocanville,” PotashCorp spokesman Randy Burton said Wednesday morning. “Rocanville is our biggest mine, our most efficient mine, so the cost of production per tonne is lower there.”

PotashCorp said it plans to eliminate red potash production at the Cory mine and instead produce about 800,000 tonnes of white potash per year. The kilometre-deep mine has a capacity of 1.4 million tonnes of red and white potash.

The change will result in about 100 permanent and 40 temporary employees losing their jobs, beginning in February and ending in late 2017. Burton said about 350 workers will retain their jobs at the mine.

The 140 job losses at the Cory mine represent just under six per cent of PotashCorp’s mining workforce, which numbers about 2,500 following the addition of 265 jobs at the Rocanville mine over the last two years, Burton said.

Saskatchewan Potash Council spokesman Darrin Kruger said in a text message that United Steelworkers local 7458, which represents workers at the Cory mine, is still dealing with the news and did not immediately wish to comment on the layoffs.

An undetermined number of miners at PotashCorp’s Allan and Lanigan mines will also be laid off in early 2017 when the company implements temporary production halts. The stoppages are expected to last 12 weeks at Allan and six at Lanigan.

Reached by phone, Unifor local 922 president Rick Suchy, whose union represents miners at PotashCorp’s Lanigan operation, said he was not immediately prepared to comment on the temporary production halt.

The job losses are “deeply concerning” to the provincial government, which is dispatching a team to assist laid-off workers with the transition to new jobs, Economy Minister Jeremy Harrison told reporters Wednesday in Regina.

“We don’t know of any additional impacts imminently; we haven’t been informed of any,” Harrison said. “But we know that sustained low commodity prices have had a significant impact already.”

“It all leads to a re-fitting of where these companies (are) in terms of production, and I think we’re getting back to where they were pre-expansion in terms of numbers of employees and production output.”

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